Breaking News on Child Sexual Abuse
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Breaking news on child sexual abuse: Early coverage of Penn State January 2012 Lori Dorfman, DrPH Pamela Mejia, MPH, MS Priscilla Gonzalez, MPH Andrew Cheyne, CPhil Acknowledgments We thank the Ms. Foundation for Women for supporting this study, and Kelly Parisi and Monique Hoeflinger in particular for their quick action, insights, and collegiality in the development of this study. Thanks to Heather Gehlert for copy editing. © Berkeley Media Studies Group, a project of the Public Health Institute, 2012 1 Breaking news on child sexual abuse: Early coverage of Penn State On Nov. 4, 2011, a grand jury indicted Jerry Sandusky, former Penn State assistant coach and founder of The Second Mile charity for disadvantaged youth, on 40 initial counts of child sexual abuse. He was arrested the following day. By November 9, Penn State Athletic Director Timothy Curley, Senior Vice President Gary Schultz, University President Graham Spanier, and football coach Joe Paterno had all been placed on leave, fired or resigned. And on November 12, Penn State played its next scheduled home football game. Less than a month later, on December 7, a second grand jury presentment charged Sandusky with 12 additional counts of child sexual abuse, raising the total to 52 separate criminal counts. Although the grand jury investigation into Sandusky’s alleged sex crimes had been underway for years and Sara Ganim, a journalist at The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., had been reporting on the investigation since March 31,1 it was not until Sandusky’s initial indictment and subsequent arrest that national media pounced on the story. That week, there were more than 2,000 stories in newspapers across the nation, as well as online discussions among sports fans and children’s advocates. In this report, we examine the first nine days of news coverage of the Sandusky case. Like the rest of the nation, BMSG was riveted by the horrific accusations coming from Penn State. But we were especially attuned to the news coverage because a few months prior, with support from the Ms. Foundation for Women, we had released a comprehensive study of how U.S. newspapers cover child sexual abuse.2 In that study we found that news coverage of child sexual abuse is infrequent, and when it does occur, it is usually tied to a "moment" in the criminal justice process, which means that there is very little coverage of prevention since most reports focus on an incident after the fact. We also found that language in news stories about child sexual abuse is often vague and imprecise, likely making it harder for readers to see what really happened. 2 The allegations against Sandusky prompted an extraordinary volume of news coverage, drawing in journalists who do not often report on child sexual abuse, such as reporters and columnists from the sports pages. And the headlines got the attention of organizations and advocates in the business of protecting children and ridding society of child sexual abuse. The news coverage provided an opportunity for those groups to bring attention to an important issue often hidden from view. In this report, we examine news coverage generated during those first days after Sandusky’s arrest, compare it to our earlier findings about how child sexual abuse is typically covered, and offer suggestions to reporters and advocates based on our observations. Child sexual abuse in the sports pages We analyzed a nationally representative random sample of the newspaper coverage of the Sandusky allegations, as well as a random sample of the two most highly visited sports websites3, ESPN.com and Yahoo Sports (see appendix for details on our methods). General Sports In dramatic fashion, the high- News News Story Topic profile arrest of Jerry Sandusky % % pushed news coverage of child (n=56) (n=75) sexual abuse into the sports Joe Paterno 32 20 pages. Nearly half (48%) of the Penn State football 0 28 coverage in American The case 9 12 newspapers appeared in sports Penn State officials 11 8 sections. Penn State itself 13 4 Child sexual abuse 13 4 However, when compared to PSU students & alumni 11 3 general news (coverage Other topics* 13 21 appearing in local or national news sections), the sports *Each other topic comprised 5% or less of the sample pages primarily discussed the sports-related topics of coach Paterno, the Penn State football program, and the consequences that the Sandusky case had on the team and coaches. While the sports articles maintained a narrow focus on the football program, the general coverage contained a significant number of articles on other topics, such as Penn State University’s role as an institution, the broader social context surrounding child sexual abuse, and reactions from Penn State students and alumni. Articles both inside and outside of the sports section featured details about the case progressing through the criminal justice system, including the arrest of Sandusky or descriptions of the alleged abuse from the first grand jury report. 3 Paterno dominates news coverage Although the Sandusky allegations brought child sexual abuse extensive attention in the news, critical aspects of the issue can remain in the background, even as a prominent story filled with graphic details gets propelled into the spotlight. During the first days of the Sandusky coverage, Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno was the main topic of all news coverage. Articles focusing on Paterno were even more common in general news (32%) than the sports pages (20%). The stories about “Joe Pa” included discussions of his record-setting coaching career, defenses of and attacks on his response to the Sandusky accusations, and his firing after 46 years coaching Penn State football. Who speaks in the Sandusky coverage? Overall, those representing the criminal justice system or some action within it were quoted the most often, in almost one-third (32%) of the early Sandusky coverage. The majority of these were statements from the grand jury testimonies, or criminal justice figures such as police spokespeople. Other heavily quoted figures were the key members included in the grand jury report, including Joe Paterno (25%), Mike McQueary (18%), and Penn State University officials such as former President Graham Spanier (17%). The sports coverage was far more likely than the general news to include quotes from Sandusky (15% vs. 2%), Paterno (31% vs. 18%), or current and former Penn State football players (29% vs. 14%). By contrast, the general news was far more likely than sports articles to quote other survivors of child sexual abuse, such as from the Catholic Church (11% vs. 4%). Across all news coverage, child sexual abuse prevention advocates (4%) were quoted about as often as sports fans (5%). Similarly, survivors’* voices were nearly absent, with direct quotes in only 2% of all articles. The survivors were indirectly represented, however, in the criminal justice statements, which quoted their grand jury testimony. *In this report we use “survivor” to refer to the children Sandusky allegedly abused, unless we are referring to them in the act of being victimized by Sandusky. We recognize that many still use the term “victim”, including the grand jury report, journalists and quoted speakers in the coverage we examined. 4 Where does sympathy lie in the Sandusky coverage? Some prevention advocates and researchers worry that news coverage about violence blames the victim or, alternatively, exonerates the perpetrator. These concerns are not unfounded. Minimizing the harm done to survivors or sympathizing with alleged perpetrators may occur when reporters include details or extraneous information about the survivors that cast the crimes committed against them as understandable.4 The New York Times, for example, placed a critical lens on a sex crime survivor in March 2011 when it described a young girl who had been gang-raped as dressing “older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s.”5 Similarly, when coverage includes details about alleged perpetrators but little information about those experiencing abuse, the story may inadvertently provide a sympathetic portrayal of the accused. Avoiding this is particularly challenging when children are abused, as details must often be withheld to shield their identity. BMSG was interested in the way that these actors were portrayed in news reports of the Sandusky case since such coverage has the potential to affect how readers perceive the different people depicted. To investigate the details of the Penn State coverage, we assessed whether articles had at least one sympathetic, unfavorable, or neutral detail about key actors. Articles could have more than one such descriptive detail, and the same article could have details that fell into all three categories. A sympathetic detail referred to descriptions that portrayed favorable characteristics, such as “iconic football coach”6 or comments that evoked sympathy, such as when a football player described Paterno when he announced that he would retire: “I’ve never seen him break down and cry…he was crying the whole time and day.”7 Unfavorable characterizations often referred to strong statements holding an actor accountable, such as when an advocate reprimanded Penn State for its failure to act: “When an institution discovers abuse of a kid, their first reaction was to protect the reputation of the institution and the perpetrator.”8 Other unfavorable details included descriptions of Sandusky as a predator who sexually abused children. Neutral details refer to the presence of information about the actors that did not include their involvement in or reaction to the Sandusky case. For instance, many sports articles examined the football team’s unsuccessful strategy, and eventual loss, to Nebraska on November 12. We analyzed how the news portrayed the main actors, including Paterno, Sandusky, university officials, survivors, and Penn State students and players.